Elon Musk—while fighting off tears—says that Tesla can't review his tweets because of "the First Amendment" and that he does not respect the Securities and Exchange Commission, which fined him and Tesla $40 million earlier this year.
https://t.co/hNH2UK6TmI

KKK leaflets dropped around Squirrel Hill last night.
Thank you @SteelCityJBGC for warning folks of the white nationalist threats and activity going on, and for the good words.
They want us to be afraid and silent. It won't work if we won't let it.
We keep us safe.

WE WON!!!
@IEC_NYU has won:
1) the creation of a committee to research non Aramark self dining
2) a seat on the contract committee in 5 yrs
3) a standing committee to divest the PIC from NYU
4) a written NYU statement supporting keeping current workers
#NYUPrisonDivest ✊🏽

Irish woman who married ghost of 300-year-old pirate says they have split up https://www.irishpost.com/news/irish-woman-married-ghost-300-year-old-pirate-says-split-162579?utm_source=twitter&utm_campaign=article&utm_medium=web via @theirishpost

“Democrats can’t find a Smocking Gun tying the Trump campaign to Russia after James Comey’s testimony. No Smocking Gun...No Collusion.” @FoxNews That’s because there was NO COLLUSION. So now the Dems go to a simple private transaction, wrongly call it a campaign contribution,...

....which it was not (but even if it was, it is only a CIVIL CASE, like Obama’s - but it was done correctly by a lawyer and there would not even be a fine. Lawyer’s liability if he made a mistake, not me). Cohen just trying to get his sentence reduced. WITCH HUNT!

> In this scenario, voters might be asked to choose between Mrs. May’s plan and remaining in the European Union. So far she has ruled this out, but if she has no Plan B it might be a possibility. This would require the consent of Parliament.

This is the only sane solution

It's the only solution that makes any sense, and should happen even if the house votes "yes, we're fine with this"

"okay so you voted you wanted us to leave, but this is the best deal we're going to get... and now that you know the deal, what would you prefer?"

oh also now that it's obvious everyone running the show before lied to you about everything about brexit, consider that too

Smocking is an embroidery technique used to gather fabric so that it can stretch. Before elastic, smocking was commonly used in cuffs, bodices, and necklines in garments where buttons were undesirable. Smocking developed in England and has been practised since the Middle Ages and is unusual among embroidery methods in that it was often worn by laborers. Other major embroidery styles are purely decorative and represented status symbols. Smocking was practical for garments to be both form fitting and flexible, hence its name derives from smock — a farmer's work shirt. Smocking was used most...

1/ A quick thread on my new story out today.
John Podesta, the former Clinton campaign chairman, talked to me about the Pizzagate conspiracy theory and its impact on his and family's lives https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/john-podesta-pizzagate-766489/

> Rand Paul criticized the entire category of “conspiracy” crimes, making the libertarian argument that people get caught up in crimes they weren’t directly involved in, such as a young woman carrying cash for her drug-dealer boyfriend.

Who among us hasn't just been carrying cash around for others?

Little known fact when Rand Paul had the lawn dispute with his neighbor he was actually and unknowingly trafficking huge amounts of drug cash on his person

Although given the definition of a banana republic is a country where the government is controlled by big business interests for the sake of extracting commodities, the US is pretty close to a banana republic.

Maybe Rand Paul thinks that it has to be banana companies in control to be a banana republic.... so his climate denialism is trying to get the US to the right grow temp for bananas, thus trump is helping his plans come to fruition

I asked Trump world if his chief of staff selection actually mattered.
Given the president's management style, reluctance to change, and continuing influence of Javanka, most said that ultimately it didn't matter who took the job. https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/tariniparti/trump-chief-staff-white-house-kelly

@puzzlepiece87 It looks like it's basically "Given a set of constraints (the state of the world of Westeros), how would [the thing we're studying] be affected". Which seems like a perfectly fine academic paper

> If Westeros managed to stabilize its government, expand commerce, invest in public institutions and infrastructure, and emphasize knowledge and reason when setting policy, that would go a long way to reducing the violence over time. Of course, that would kill all the dramatic tension and the show's popularity would plummet. Hence, the authors conclude, "It seems unlikely any such changes will occur before the last episode of the final season reaches television screens worldwide."

Well, Pat Robertson's Operation Blessing planes were transporting diamond-mining equipment for the African Development Corporation, a Robertson-owned venture initiated with the cooperation of Mobutu Sese Seko—the Congolese dictator who paid for lobbying to seek entry into the US

Garcetti's speech at USC on human rights interrupted by protesters; event has turned into a shouting match/Q&A between Garcetti and protesters angry about LAPD, homelessness, gentrification and Olympics. Many in audience also applauding him.

What happens when Yandex blurs out secret and semi-secret Turkish/Israeli military facilities in its satellite imagery? Well, you find out exactly where the places are, and then you check them on other mapping services that haven't blurred them out.
https://fas.org/blogs/security/2018/12/widespread-blurring-of-satellite-images-reveals-secret-facilities/?fbclid=IwAR0gGzQTL_OG_bq-HUNxr7ydlVFTc9i-dov5GMWbA1Z1fxurUgVjj6X2dIw

@murgatroid99 Depends on which variant exactly. There is plenty of religious beliefs that are fundamentally about unprovable things. I think that's a different category than anything that actually contradicts aspects of the material world.

@MadScientist In my opinion, there isn't much real difference between believing something for which there is no evidence, and believing something that contradicts evidence. But I think there are reasonable arguments on either side of that.

I don't see how you expected that to be read as anything but rude, claiming that people of faith are as deluded as conspiracy theorist of one of the more awful and harmful conspiracies in recent memory

I know very well that you aren't religious and do not understand those who are, but I kinda expected a bit more respect instead of outright hostility

@Ash I think I projected my own thoughts on the topic onto others to the point that I misjudged the emotional impact of my words. In my mind, what I said was just a statement of opinion/perspective, not an attack on individual people. I see now that I was mistaken and I'm sorry that I said it. In the future I will keep my thoughts about religion to myself.

The Mace of the United States House of Representatives, also called the Mace of the Republic is one of the oldest symbols of the United States government. It symbolises the governmental authority of the United States, and more specifically, the legislative authority of the House of Representatives.
== History ==
In one of its first resolutions, the U.S. House of Representatives of the 1st Federal Congress (April 14, 1789) established the Office of the Sergeant at Arms. The resolution stated "a proper symbol of office shall be provided for the Sergeant at Arms, of such form and device as the Speaker...

> In accordance with the House Rules, on the rare occasion that a member becomes unruly, the Sergeant at Arms, upon order of the Speaker, lifts the mace from its pedestal and presents it before the offenders, thereby restoring order.

Since the members are able to edit the Congressional Record before it goes to print, there is no mention of the actual use of the mace in this capacity.[citation needed] A recent recorded threat to present the mace was on July 29, 1994, when Rep. Maxine Waters interrupted Rep. Peter T. King on the floor of the House, although the mace was ultimately not presen…

Of course, it was mentioned in this capacity when Maxine Waters (black woman) interrupted Peter King (white man).

@GodEmperorDune From my perspective, he is always criticizing institutions that I have positive feelings about, and as soon as it went the other way he says I'm acting in bad faith. But given how other people reacted I shouldn't have said that

This room was placed in timeout for 2 minutes; the topic of this room is "The news discussion offshoot of the Bridge. Stars reserved for news items. Discussion should primarily be about news topics. " - conversation should be limited to that topic.

Actually, let me stop you there for a second

I get what you're saying @murgatroid99 about how this room can be really bad for mocking people who hold different opinions and beliefs than the norm in this room is, and we should honestly all be better about that, but we shouldn't really go around mocking people for their faith either. It's something folks hold really deeply, and so we should probably just leave the topic alone all together.

@Unionhawk Yes, but let's not mock people because they disagree with you or believe capitalism is a thing that actually works (or has a capacity to work).

Let's also just avoid the topic of religion all together, and additionally, that qanon post really isn't news. We're basically just posting it to laugh at a bunch of people, which really isn't cool, so I'm just going to delete it.

BREAKING: The Supreme Court just rejected a case that could have allowed states to cut Planned Parenthood out of their Medicaid programs. Justices ROBERTS and KAVANAUGH joined with the court's progressives to preserve @PPFA's public funding https://www.politico.com/story/2018/12/10/supreme-court-planned-parenthood-defunding-case-845056